THE organisers of the court case regarding a second independence referendum have asked pro-independence politicians to back their cause.
After a recent judge’s ruling – revealed in The National – that the Forward As One group’s case had “real prospects of success”, each Member of the Scottish Parliament who supports independence – the SNP and the Scottish Greens – was asked over the weekend to join in the case which is currently before Scotland’s highest civil court.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and her Cabinet members plus Scottish Greens’ co-leader Patrick Harvie were included in the list of MSPs asked to add their name.
The action is being taken against the Westminster Government’s Advocate General Lord Richard Keen and the Lord Advocate and Scottish Ministers.
The case seeks a declarator of the court that the Scottish Parliament has the power to legislate for the holding of a referendum on whether Scotland should be an independent country without requiring the consent of the UK Government or any further amendment of the Scotland Act 1998. That act includes the section 30 agreement needed to allow a referendum which Boris Johnson has refused to trigger despite the SNP’s overwhelming wins in last year’s European and General Elections.
The action is being funded by a second crowdfunding exercise which has so far raised £116,000 of its £155,000 target, adding to the £44,000 raised in the first crowdfunder to start the case. More than 4000 people have already contributed with one supporter alone pledging £2000.
Replies are expected this week to the request, made by organiser Martin James Keatings, which stated: “Boris Johnson and co only act in a manner which serves their own vested interests, and which is conducive to their own political agenda.
“The polls tell us clearly that support for independence is no longer a blip, it is a sustained recognition that the people within our borders have weighed, measured, and found the UK Government wanting.
“Some of you may have heard of the Peoples Action on Section 30, some of you may agree, and indeed have come out in support of that action. Others, may be sceptical or otherwise against deviation from the line of a section 30 order, but the balance of probabilities are and shall remain that Boris Johnson will not acquiesce to an order in council to enable the sovereign right of the people of Scotland to define their own constitutional future, and so over 7000 ordinary members of the electorate, of which over 4000 have financially backed our move, seek to end the ambiguity and the constitutional paralysis which would prevail as a result of the Section 30 question remaining unanswered.”
For the avoidance doubt, the names of all 7000 petition signatories are included in the e-mail. Keatings adds: “To ensure that the case remained an action of the people engaging their sovereign right to have a substantive question of constitutional legal consequence answered, the decision was not to seek the support of parliamentarians until such time as it was clear that matters would proceed. We have now reached this point.
“With over £150,000 raised by the general electorate across two fundraisers as of this morning, and scheduled to hit our target by week’s end with our case in the advanced stages and it being put forward to be appointed to the procedural roll of the Court of Session, we now call on every parliamentarian, at home in Holyrood and those who act as our voice in Westminster, to join with us formally as pursuers to the cause and to stand with your constituents.
“I call on you now to respond to this correspondence and make yourself known. Whether that be to become a pursuer to the cause, or whether that be to write formally in support of the action.
“If you agree and aver that the people of Scotland are sovereign in the determination of their constitutional future, then we request that you stand in defence of ... their right to exercise that sovereignty.”
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